Niki Cheong turns 30: The Pictures!

In case you were wondering, no, I wasn’t timing this post to coincide with my actual birthday. I had a party at Urbanattic in Cap Square on Friday for a couple of reasons: 1. My actual birthday is a weekday and 2. Saturday was the eve of Hari Raya.

I’m glad I did because I had a great time and felt very overwhelmed with the love and friends that were all there to celebrate my big 3-0 with me (albeit a few days early). The official photos from the party, taken by John Ong, only came in yesterday and after a whole day of captioning and watermarking it, I am ready to share them with you!

Some of my friends (and relatives) came together to help me organise the party and I am most grateful to them. In fact, it was Carmen Soo and Elaine Daly, pictured below with Dato’ Yasmin Yusuff and Jit, who kept pushing me to make sure my plans were in order and my invites went out on time. Thank you so much!

When I was planning the party, I knew immediately what the theme would be. No one could understand why I chose it – and many really didn’t know what it meant! I have this dislike for costume parties (I hate dressing up!) so I made it a thematic party instead and chose a theme that was universal and vague enough for people to interpret differently. Okay, so my fascination for the Spice Girls (how about Yasmin’s T-shirt up there, huh?) had a bit to do with it.

The theme was POP! Many people were very creative. Some came as pop stars (Grace was Cindy Lauper and Nasa was Britney Spears), some came as pop tarts (Melody) while the most unique ones were Sharmila (Popeye!) and my sister Jade (Pop Quiz), although she wanted to come as Paddle Pop!

I made a T-shirt following Andy Warhol’s pop art style – with my face in various colours. It’s my birthday so I can get away with it! I also made sure there were many balloons (thanks to William Lim’s DeRomp who kindly sponsored the colourful balloons to decorate the place) and brought some colourful party hats, bubble liquid to blow bubbles and those bouncy hairy balls to go with the theme. The drinks that night were whiskey and vodka cocktails in a variety of colours – blue, red, gold and yellow!

Also, thanks to Kiehl‘s who offered a small goodie bag to all my guests with shampoo, body gel, toner and more!

Some of my close friends went up on stage to perform and entertain my 100-odd guests. Tony Leo and Carmen stepped up to perform a duet of Lucky (by Jason Mraz) before Tony performed a solo of Sting’s Englishman in New York. He changed the lyrics to Bangsar Boy in KL. Will Quah came up next to perform another of Sting’s hits – Fields of Gold. I am very honoured and grateful to have them perform at my birthday! Thank you so much!

Because it was my big birthday, I wanted to invite as many good friends as I could. Those who showed up ranged from friends I’ve known since primary school, my college and uni mates, theatre buddies, and my new blogger friends. The picture below is of the latter – (from left) Rames, Soon Wei, Amanda Choe, Smashpop, Howard U and Brian Lau.

I was also happy that my abang – Jit Murad – came by and my really good friend Adeline Tan, who celebrated her birthday yesterday, were also there to join in the festivities.

I can’t post so many pictures on here, so I thought I’d do a collage and post as many as possible (hope I didn’t miss anyone out). There were almost 350 photos in all taken on that night. If you are interested, you can view them on my Flickr page here.

I’m going to attempt to caption them here:

Top row: Kee Thai and Ivy Soon (both of whom I met when I was 16!); Rubin Khoo, Choon and Amri; Leonard, Vig and my childhood buddy Rozhan Razman.

Third row: Yun, Danny, Alan, Llew, his friend and Daniel; Soon Wei and I; the scrapbook for guests to leave a birthday wish that my sister May made for me; my friends from The Star Melody, S Indramalar, Rubin Khoo (now with August Man) and Ann Marie Chandy.

Fourth row: Serena C and Carmen, my college mates and their other halfs Fui Fui, Wye Kit, Mag, Ethan, Carol, Zoey and Kevin; the mess from the confetti.

Fifth row: Dancing with my fellow castmates from A Christmas Carol Grace Ng and Nicole-Ann Thomas to Grease Lightning; the crowd watching a special performance (pic below!) and me making a very important birthday wish.

Last row: Dato’ Zahim Albakri was the last to arrive!; my housemate in Australia Yen with her friend Janice; Amanda and I blowing bubbles; Hansen Lee, Low Ngai Yuen, Elaine and Carmen.

Phew!

I needed to make you earn this picture! Elaine, Carmen and Wee Kiat fulfilled my lifetime fantasy of watching the Spice Girls perform (this is the next best thing, hey!) by giving me this birthday present. They performed three songs and er, tried to strip me at one point. But I was a good boy and kept my clothes on! It was such a fun night!

What also made my night was having my family to celebrate my birthday with me. I usually do it with my friends and do a quiet dinner with them every year so it was nice to have them join in the fun. I love them all very much! On that note, I’ll end this post with a picture of them – one for the album as they say.

Thank you to everyone who sent me love, positivity and birthday wishes. I’m 30 and still alive. Who’d have thought, eh?

[...] join me – too. I was going to write a lot about it, but I think the pictures say it all. So head over to my blog post on it to see it all (link to my Flickr photo set of the birthday party there [...]

Niki Cheong is blogging

Niki is a writer, lecturer and speaker on journalism, social media and digital culture. He has written for The Star, Esquire, Going Places and NewMan, among other publications. His commentary on social media has seen him being featured on the BBC, Al Jazeera, MTV Asia, NTV7 and Astro Awani. You can tweet him or connect with him on Facebook.